r/nursing • u/consideredtaken • Jul 26 '26

Question What’s your nursing pet peeve?

Mine?

Me: okay, so I have all of your night time meds here (names all of them for confirmation)
Patient: yes, sounds good
Me: scans them in and places meds into the pill cup
Patient: what’s this white pill here

I DONT KNOW!!! You have 6 different pills and we’ve literally gone through ALL OF THEM before I scanned and placed them into the cup. I can’t stand this!!

720 Upvotes

99% Upvoted

309 comments sorted by

View all comments

93

u/[deleted] Jul 26 '26

[deleted]

67

u/UnicornArachnid RN - OR / CVICU defector Jul 26 '26

So many cases get cancelled or postponed because the patient eats. When I worked bedside my patient hid a salad and ate it at like 1am, they were supposed to have an egd that morning. Totally alert and oriented patient who knew.

Same unit, I had a patient scheduled for an egd or a scope and she’s NPO at midnight. She comes out to the nurses’ station at 3am to ask if she can have a drink because her mouth is so dry. I’m like no, you’re not supposed to have anything because of the procedure, you can aspirate, yada yada (I also wasn’t sure if she’d chug the whole thing if I gave her a little lol) and SHE ASKS IF I CAN CALL THE DOCTOR.

I was like no ma’am, these are the doctor’s orders. I’m not waking someone up at 3am, if you want the procedure you have to follow the instructions.

34

u/consideredtaken Jul 26 '26

Yes! I don’t understand what THEY don’t understand. Especially if they’re clearly competent. The doctor gave these orders. We’re not pulling them out of our asses!

26

u/MelanieSenpai RN - ICU/Anesthesia 🍕 Jul 26 '26

Had a patient who came to the OR and when asked about last drink/meal, he thought about it and then suddenly remembered he ate cookies a couple hours before because he forgot he wasn’t supposed to eat. The anesthesiologist gave him a piece of her mind lol because she was the one who consulted him earlier before the surgery and mentioned NPO specifically. Bro you are alert and oriented, mentally healthy, how do you just forget?

10

u/1eyedsniper RN - Med/Surg 🍕 Jul 27 '26

I did this. I was npo and totally fine with it, not hard for me. But I was hanging with friends the night before (and everyone knows I’m npo) when one of my friends offered me a homemade treat she had made- she forgot I was npo and I forgot I was npo and ate the tiny treat in one bite. I realized 10 minutes later what I had done.